Secondhand smoking VS. secondhand driving?

Factual Questions
1

Dammit…I logged in, and apparently by the time I finished my post, I was no longer logged in. Post lost. Attempt to rephrase:

Hi all, I’m a long-time-reader-second-time-writer (nobody ever wrote back the first time around), and I find myself very dissatisfied with one of Cecil’s staffers.

My query:
“Cecil, this question is inspired by the recent cigarette federal tax hike; the rationale for which is that my smoking hurts other people, and their added health costs are defrayed by my paying more for cigarettes. I smoke cigarettes, strictly outside, and I ride the bus. My mom drives everywhere, and doesn’t smoke. Which one of us is worse for other people’s lungs? It seems to me the answer to this question is the same answer to the following: Which of us should pay the higher vice tax?”

  • Phrank in Baltimore

Staffer’s response:

“It’s not just the hurting of other people, it’s the added medical care that YOU (and other smokers) will likely need, which is statistically speaking much much higher than the medical care costs of non-smokers over a lifetime. And since much of that burden is born by Medicare and Medicaid, or by the hospitals (who can’t refuse to treat someone), that’s the justification for higher taxes. Reasonable or not? Well, you might go to our web-site at www.straightdope.com and to the section called “Message Boards” to pose your question there. Some regular posters are experts in medical costs related to smoking, and it should stir up an interesting discussion.”

Some of my thoughts:

  • Where are these hospitals that can’t refuse to treat someone? I should stop spending all this money on insurance if that’s the case, and just go to these imaginary no-refusal hospitals. It’s one thing to say that they can’t turn away someone in an immediate life-or-death emergency, i.e., mortally wounded or suffering from a heart attack. It’s another thing to say that they will treat my emphysema regardless of my ability to pay for it. I don’t see this cigarette tax defraying any of my health costs, so all that can remain is for it to help the victims of my ETS.

Which, I notice, was not discussed in the slightest, particularly other forms of ES, notably, driving! Ahhh, driving, that good old American pastime. Let’s forget about the carbon emissions (which contribute to global warming, but not directly to human health, so fork it) and the lack of exercise that driving promotes, and focus strictly on the directly human-hurting, cancer-causing, liver-failing chemicals that they may or may not emit into the environment.

Now, if I could easily find specific information on the subject, I wouldn’t be asking Cecil and I wouldn’t be asking y’all, so I’ve got to start off with some best-case numbers and wild-ass conjectures, based on what I’ve found on Wikipedia and Reddit (links in old post, can try to find later).

Assumption one: One of the least polluting cars available, the Toyota Prius, emits “less than 110 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer”. Assumption two: A pack of tobacco contains 22 grams of tobacco.

Now, let’s pretend that that approximately 1.1 gram of tobacco in my cigarette is 100% composed of nicotine, tar and other toxic chemicals, and let’s pretend that there are 10 grams of CO2 for every ONE gram of toxic CO, hydrocarbons and suspended particulate matter. With these assumptions in mind, it becomes clear that driving one of the cleanest cars around smokes about a half-pack of cigarettes every kilometer, and if you drive 5 miles or 16 kilometers to work each way, then every day you might as well smoke two cigarettes for every one Walt Disney smoked (who was a 5-pack-a-day smoker…but this was back in the day before cigarettes were bad for you). If my suspicions are right, however; if tobacco, by weight, also contains a percentage of inert plant material, and if the CO2-to-other-pollutants ratio is less dramatic than my best-case scenario, then driving a hybrid for ten miles a day is even MORE than sixteen times as bad for my neighbors as my half-pack-a-day habit.

Now feel free to replace my pseudoscientific/wikiscientific methods with some actual data.

2

Your assumption of 1 CO per 10 CO2’s is wrong. Modern cars produce practically no carbon monoxide-- the federal standard is less than 5 grams per mile for most cars: http://www.epa.gov/oms/stds-ld.htm

Also, unless it’s a drive-in, I don’t run my car in a crowded restaurant or bar and consequently my car exhaust has a chance to dissipate before others breathe it in any great concentration.

3

Well, by that standard, “practically no CO” just means “less than five cigarettes worth per mile,” or for someone with a very light ten-mile-a-day habit, less than 50 cigarettes a day. IF cigarettes were just tubes of solidified CO. And CO is just one toxic thing that comes out of exhaust pipes. Still left to discuss hydrocarbons and particulate matter, the automobile’s version of “tar.”

And smoking in a crowded restaurant or bar is no longer possible in many, many states, by now…certainly none that I’ve been to recently. For the record, I approve of that law, as much as I miss nursing a beer and a cigarette in tandem.

4

I don’t think you’ll get very far trying to make comparisons with driving a car. Cars are essentially considered a necessity for things like going to work and getting the kids to activities that help them grow into productive citizens. Society as a whole benefits hugely from many things that are facilitated by cars, and is willing to tolerate some correlating negative effects. Any benefits from smoking are miniscule in comparison.

5

CO is also not the only toxic thing to come out of a cigarette.

6

In absolute terms, the guy driving the car pays way more in taxes on his “dirty habit” than you do smoking a pack a day.

-RNATB, smoker.

7

Okay, one question at a time. No-refusal hospitals are not imaginary. Most hospitals are that way. It’s one reason medical care costs so much. People who don’t have a “regular doctor” because they can’t afford routine medical care often take non-emergency events to a hospital’s emergency room. The hospital takes them in, insurance or not, money or not. If they have no insurance, they’ll be billed. If they can’t pay, the hospital ends up eating the unpaid bill.

If you take your infected foot or your emphysema to an ER, yes, they’ll treat you. In most places, you’ll get the same care whether you have insurance or not. They’ll bill the insurance company or you. If you can’t pay, bill collectors will pursue you, and eventually you’ll be sued. If hospital can’t wring the money out of you, the next guy pays more for his medical care there. Hey, they have to pay the nurses somehow.

8

Valid points, everyone. Particularly you, RNATB, and I’d like to discuss that in greater detail later. But does this mean nobody has any actual data to share?

I’d really like to get hard numbers out on the table. Let’s start with, how does a mile driven compare to smoking a cigarette, in terms of releasing known chemical carcinogens into people’s lungs?

Because Gary T, it’s precisely that sort of rationalization I’d like to confront with said numbers. I want to get an idea of really, how bad environmental smoke cigarettes provide in relation to vices that are perfectly socially acceptable.

If we discussed the numbers and found that, say, taking one automobile off the road would do as much to reduce deaths or health complications from passive smoking, as getting ten people to quit smoking, would you still say that? I expect that yes, you probably would. Just like with smoking, people are reluctant to consider quitting the car or cutting down on its use, and they get defensive when such a thing is proposed, even in light of information that walking or cycling would improve one’s health independently of the pollution factor, and riding the bus or the train significantly reduces individual costs and traffic congestion.

But let’s talk about this stuff AFTER we get a good idea of what the real health effects are, and I propose the best way to start with that is the following two questions:

How many grams of fine particulate matter, hydrocarbons and CO are emitted from an average car in a mile driven?

How many grams of fine particulate matter, hydrocarbons and CO are emitted from a smoked cigarette?

Afterwards, we can introduce nuance.

9

On Hospitals: Many clinics or hospitals are “free.” they use a sliding scale to determine your ability to pay. So, if you reduce your income to $0, they will treat you for free. You won’t necessarily get every treatment or the best treatments… but on the bright side, your lack of money will mean that you’ll have quit smoking and driving.

Comparisons of Pollution: There are so many different contaminants in both engine exhaust and cigarettes that I don’t know how any comparison can be decisive. CO and CO2 are components, but so are particulate matter, nicotine, tar, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, arsenic and a host of other trace elements.

Exposure to Pollution: You also have to look at concentrations and exposure. Drivers inhale a lot less of car pollution than pedestrians because cars are closed to the outside, but pedestrians don’t stand directly behind cars inhaling the exhaust. On the other hand, parents often smoke with their children trapped inside the car or an apartment, greatly increasing the exposure amount and duration compared to auto pollution.

10

What cigarette are you comparing to what car, and what emissions? You only mentioned the Toyota Prius as the least polluting automobile, but doesn’t that depend on what kind of emission you’re looking at? Also, the Toyota is probably not very widespread, from what I’ve gathered here (both new and expensive compared to other cars). If you want a really pollution-free car, shouldn’t you compare a solar-driven electric /hydrogen car? (that is a car powered by electric or hydrogen which in turn is produced by solar cells on your roof or similar). Yes, it’s not widespread (now), but it would be completly emissionfree, to serve those needs of the modern society where a car is necessary (instead of a train or plane).

There’s also different driving styles and different types of gas - and different types of smoking that produce different emissions. Though I don’t know if everybody has measured them yet - I only remember that some recent survey showed that nicotine-reduced “light” cigarettes meant more harm for smokers, because to get their needed dose, the smokers sucked much harder, so they got more tar and other stuff.
But I can’t remember any study about how that would affect second-hand smoke.

Cigarettes have some emisisons that cars don’t and vice versa.

11

If you want hard numbers how about comparing the number of people killed per year by automobiles to the number of people killed per year by second hand smoke.

When gathering data be sure not to use any EPA reports that have been invalidated by a federal judge for such things as: cherry picking data, excluding nearly half of the available studies, committed to a conclusion before research had begun, adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the Agency’s public conclusion, disregarded information, made findings on selective information, failed to disclose important findings and reasoning … you get the idea; it goes on for over 90 pages.

12

Since this is GQ, I’ll go ahead and point out that the report was thrown out by the federal district court judge for the middle district of North Carolina, whose court is located in Winston-Salem. So you might say he’s got a small conflict of interest issue here.

13

Yes, you might. If you can’t dispute the facts, attempt to smear the reputation of the presenter.

14

Mmm, this is a pretty tricky thing to measure in that respect though, isn’t it? It’s one thing to consider people who smoke, who inhale tobacco in a completely different way from non-smokers.

Just one problem, right off the bat, is that pretty much any study on people killed by automobiles is going to involve trauma, not second-hand smoke from the tailpipe. And how can we separate people sucking up carcinogens from tobacco smoke from people who suck up carcinogens from burnt gasoline? There’s nothing we can really ethically do in a laboratory, when it comes to actual people. We can observe, in the general nonsmoking population, respiratory health problems, but how do we separate one cause from another in them?

This is why I think the first step needs to be measuring the amount of lung-harming agents in both cigarettes and ICEs, but I readily admit that more thought needs to be put into it, for instance, how much of each nonsmokers inhale.

Oh, and RNATB, while it’s probably true that drivers pay more taxes for their habit than smokers, isn’t it also true that drivers need a massive, constantly repaired infrastructure to support their habit? I think all the registration fees and license fees and gas taxes go more to pay for roads than pay for driving-related health costs.

15

The judge in question also has a record of making anti-tobacco rulings. And federal judges are not known for being biased.

16

Well, yes, but roads are also required for buses, trucks and so on. There’s also something to the argument given above that driving is a productive activity and smoking isn’t.

Do you have a cite for that?

17

While the dangers of secondhand smoke are up for debate, I want some legislation passed to ban bacteria and viruses from all public places. My safety should be tantamount darnit!

18

A simpler approach might be to look at epidemiological estimates of the harm of smog in a big city, or perhaps occupational hazards of people that work in environments where they breath in lots of exhaust. As always, wiki looks like a decent place to start.

Here’s a news piece about such a study, and here’s the study itself.

19

Gah- I meant to add this to my first post:

Anyway, I seem to recall reading somewhere that the structure of diesel exhaust fumes were different than those of gasoline, and did more damage to your lungs. Fire departments across the country have special hoses installed that attach to the exhaust pipe to keep fumes to a minimum in the garage for this reason. So if this is true, you may still be more of a health risk, and doing more to harm other people, than your mother.

20

Quick side question: What are you referring to with ICE here? I don’t think you mean InterCityExpress trains, but I don’T know what else the abbreviation refers to.